Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,31

setting sun threw our shadows down in front of us, hers touching mine, though we were still strangers to each other.

‘You sent me a gift,’ I said.

‘I’ve never done anything like that before.’ She kept her face turned away from me, her eyes on the stalls. Spiky stacks of artichokes. A row of glossy aubergines.

‘You didn’t sign it.’

‘No.’

‘I liked the mystery of that.’

‘I didn’t need to sign it. I knew you’d know who it was from.’

‘How could you be certain?’

‘I just knew.’

I looked at her sidelong.

‘You say you like mystery.’ She had stopped at the edge of the square. The buzz and clatter of the market packing up – special offers, knock-down prices, dozens of last-minute deals being done. ‘I’ve got more mystery in me than –’ and she spun round, turning a full circle – ‘than all these people put together.’

‘We all have our secrets,’ I said gently, ‘don’t we?’

Her face tightened, and she lowered her voice until I could barely hear what she was saying. ‘Something happens, and in that moment you make a new person, another you, so there are two of you suddenly, and you believe in that new person with every fibre of your being, and you pretend that the other person, the person you left behind, you pretend she doesn’t exist, even though she might tug at your sleeve sometimes, and talk to you at night, and make surprise appearances in your dreams –’

I stepped in front of her. ‘You’re describing me. Here. Now. And for the last fifteen years.’

She didn’t understand. How could she?

‘Can you ride a horse?’ I said.

She looked at the ground and laughed. I asked if I had said something funny. She shook her head, and then apologized.

I was thinking of visiting a potter who lived in the country outside Florence, I told her. I wanted to see his work. If I borrowed two horses, she could come with me.

‘He makes animals.’ I tried to remember what Jack Towne had told me. ‘Wolves,’ I said uncertainly.

‘Wolves?’

‘Pigs too, I think.’

She was laughing again, more openly this time. She could probably be free on Friday, she said. I told her I would come for her. It would be early, just after dawn. Though it was reckless, even risky, I took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. Then, before she could change her mind, I whirled off up the street.

‘Wait!’

I turned round.

She was standing where I had left her, but the low sun edged her face in gold, which made her difficult to see.

‘You don’t know where I live,’ she said. ‘How can you come for me if you don’t know where I live?’

In June, while exploring the wax workshops on Via de’ Servi, I had met a man who made votive images. During our conversation he had mentioned a type of gypsum that was quarried in the hills around Volterra. He claimed it produced a plaster that was more pliant and sensitive than any other. Thinking of the Grand Duke’s commission, I had put in an order for half a hundredweight.

The day after my coincidental encounter with Faustina, the sacks of gypsum were delivered to my workshop. I had been wondering how to get through the week. Now, all of a sudden, I had something to occupy me. I baked the gypsum for several hours, heating the rocks to a high temperature. Once I had purged them of all their moisture I let them cool, then I ground them into a fine powder. When the gypsum was ready, I sent for Fiore. I needed her for an experiment, I said. She arrived in the shoes I had bought her the year before, and a precarious fontange involving seagull feathers, a small rodent’s skull, and half a dozen bulrushes.

‘The height of fashion,’ I said, ‘as always.’

She grinned.

I rubbed hemp oil into her hands to prevent the wet plaster sticking to her skin, then I coated two short lengths of string in pig fat and attached them to her right hand so they started on either side of her wrist and met at the end of her longest finger. Once her hand was covered in plaster, I would take hold of the string, first one piece, then the other, and gently pull them sideways, cutting through the plaster as a cheese-wire cuts through cheese. Later, when the plaster had set, I would be able to lift the mould away in two neat halves.

I mixed tepid water into the kevelled gypsum. When